It's an interesting discussion. I would agree that the way engagement works on Nostr already provides less of an incentive to spam.

Dealing with hate speech (or "speech I do not like") is going to be a different issue imo. The line between making a place comfortable for average users and engaging in censorship is very fine and hard to tread.

One has only to look at the fediverse to see how silo'd that has become. That same silo'ing situation ends up with users who have to carefully censor themselves because they are afraid to be banned (I would argue a lot of mastodon has become this way) or being exposed to a lot of disagreeable extremism - echo chambers tend to amplify the most extreme in each group.

For a network like Nostr, which has the stated goal of being censorship resistant, this is not a simple issue. The most direct method I can think of is still individual block lists, and enabling users to moderate content for themselves.

I am very in favor of expanding these tools so individuals can block single accounts and even entire NIP-5 domains that are associated with groups they dislike. This is a client-side action that empowers users and promotes freedom of choice and freedom of affiliation.

Any attempt to centralize that leads down a path that looks like fediblock.